Last Rites
by Algol H
Summary: It's a silly feeling, dying. But coming back? That's just wrong.
1. A Death to Start

It's a weird feeling, slipping. You plant your foot in complete confidence that it will stick tight to the ground, and the next thing you know you're off balance. Momentum carries you forward, your equilibrium reeling to catch up. It's a silly feeling, and a shocking feeling. Like when a friend tells a cringe-worthy pun, or the moment right before somebody gets pied in the face.

It's a strange feeling, falling face first into cold, hard asphalt. The initial shock jars away the whole experience of the slip, and in the next second you're leaving tiny bits of your skin and hair embedded into the surface. Your face burns and your body, if just for a moment, loses all will to move.

But you can't sit still. You have to keep moving.

You don't want to die.

That's what I tell myself. Am telling myself. Told myself as I climbed to my feet on the cold, red rooftop. My body burned. I resumed running. I heard myself gasp as my chest spasmed from the effort of movement. It was a harsh sound, I remember, and also I remember the way the fog from my gasps curled into tight, trepid twirls. I remember how the cold began to sink deep into my core as what little body heat I had left seeped out into another red-skied night. But none of that mattered. I just kept running.

I thought to myself: it was a silly thing to do, slipping. But my blood had been so slick there wasn't much I could have done. I had stopped and hid for a moment to close up my side, nothing more than a few seconds of desperate first aide. But when I took off again I didn't look where I stepped. As I replayed the moment in my mind I noticed that the fall had busted things right back open. I had lost my hiding spot in vain.

As I ran, I pressed a gloved hand over the gushing wound in my lower left torso. I couldn't tell if an artery had been hit. I didn't have time to find out. My body seared from the bruises. My ribs, either broken or fractured, rattled around like razor blades in my chest. Every time I gasped for air they vibrated, tearing me up on the inside and threatening to pierce one or both lungs. I ignored it.

My eyes focused on the gap I was running towards. It opened down onto a nameless alleyway several stories below. I was aiming for the rooftop on the other side of this gap. It was about a ten-foot jump. No problem. Piece of cake. A complete joke.

Usually.

As soon as I left the ground my whole body cringed uncontrollably as pain, like white-hot electric shocks, shot through me. Every muscle tensed instantly. My head swam. I forgot where I was. My vision spun and dimmed. The chase, the wounds, the whole scenario started to fade from my mind. I was slipping again, different this time, now into a sickly sleep. Time seemed to stretch out forever, and I was weightless and warm and numb.

Then, in a clear, terrible moment I remembered where I was. I remembered that I was running for my life. I remembered that I was broken and bleeding out over the Gotham rooftops. I remembered that I was passing out mid-leap and was about to fall ten stories down to the pavement below.

Fortunately, perhaps, another bullet hit me. This time in my upper back on the left side, right under my shoulder blade. The exploding nerve endings and tearing flesh shocked me back to a delirious consciousness. The momentum of the shot was just enough to propel me the last few feet to the adjacent rooftop I'd been jumping for.

My body hit the asphalt at full speed. I was never quite sure if the sound I made was a thud or squish. It was hard to tell, especially as distracted as I was by the circumstances. I rolled from the momentum, too weak to stop myself, and finally settled on my back. I felt my left lung collapse, but my brain had shut off the pain as my endorphins pulled one last hurrah. My vision started tunneling on the red Gotham sky I'd spent my childhood fighting under. It was the same blood red backdrop that had watched me grow from sidekick to partner. From child to young man. From son to orphan to son.

My body was dying. My strength was spent. My mind felt like it was starting to spiral down a long and final decent.

My will to live could only manifest itself in ragged, stuttering gulps of cold, Gotham air. The fog escaped my mouth like bits of spirit, or else frantic signals praying to someone, to anyone, for mercy.

When she landed on the rooftop next to me she was nearly silent. Her boots took steps that were feather light. My tunnel vision kept me from seeing her properly, but I could feel her staring at me. Smiling. Sneering. My ears were ringing loud enough now that I couldn't hear anymore, but I new she was laughing. Gloating.

Bragging.

I think I passed out just as she put the rifle's barrel to my forehead. I don't quite remember, but I feel like she said the words, "See you in Hell, Robin," right before she pulled the trigger.

It's a silly feeling, dying.

But coming back? That's just wrong.


	2. Lazarus Rising

There is a golden rule to torture. There is a limit that all who seek to torture must pander to if they wish to be successful. This is the law of maximum pain.

Most people don't know, but the brain has a pain limit. Past a certain point, the brain just refuses to process the input and floods itself with endorphins. That's why torture is such an art form. If the victim knows how to handle the maximum amount of pain, then the torturer must come up with creative ways to prolong the process. He must draw out the pain and figure out how to inflict it in imaginative, horrifying ways. He must tease the victim with their own suffering, make each broken finger and hot brand only as significant as the promise of another, like each spill of battery acid and slice of an eyeball is just a whisper in their ear, saying, "Yes, it can get worse than this. And it will."

That's why it takes will power to resist torture. It's not just handling the maximum amount of pain; it's resisting the slow climb to the top. And that's why the further and further up the hill you climb, the more and more the torturer starts to lose his cool. Because as he draws the last ounce of blood from your veins, he knows that you've won.

Rebirth, it seems, apparently never heard of this golden rule.

I'm not sure how it manages to surpass maximum pain, but I can assure you it does. Maybe it's just that this arguably paranormal process manages to violate the brain's biology. But, honestly, in my gut I feel like it was the juxtaposition of quiet death next to overwhelming life that gave the experience a whole new flavor of agony.

You see, it's less than nothing, being dead. Not just a simple, blank blackness. Not merely a vacancy of sensation or a lack of thought. It's a true absence; a vacuum of being.

Yet, even nothing is something.

When you're dead, there is nothing to sense. Nothing to feel, taste, touch, smell or see. When you're dead, there is no space in which to exist, and no time in which to experience.

Imagine, right now, being without a space to be, or a moment to be in.

And, without sense, without space, without time, there are no thoughts, and nothing to think about. No emotions. No ego. No logic. No identity to speak of.

Looking back, it was actually kind of comforting. It was peaceful, in a way. Not that I experienced any comfort or peace. But in comparison to the sheer viscosity of life, death was mercifully effortless.

The first thing I noticed wrong was that I could notice something at all. It wasn't a sensation, not even a thought or emotion. It was the color of a thought. The vibration of neurons firing. The shadow of an I.

And, in feeling my own pain, I re-learned space and time.

Each inch of my flesh came melting back to life in what felt like an impossible flurry of red hot, acid tipped, metal needles that were shocking energy through me as if hooked up to car batteries. The air my lungs were taking in felt like mustard gas mixed with fiberglass. My heart, inexplicably beating, was an earthquake in my chest, pumping burning, liquid lead through each and every vein in body.

But my brain, my brain hurt the worst.

It wasn't a physical pain. At least, that wasn't the worst part. It was the shock. The horror. Like any good torturer, Rebirth knew that pain takes second place to horror.

I can't really explain it. You have to know it for yourself. What it's like to come back from death. The whole spectacle of existing is a nauseating odor that makes your soul wretch. The terrible flamboyancy of having a body shames your screaming consciousness. The mere realization that, "Oh God, I'm alive. Why am I alive?" tears through your head like a rabid dog.

I opened my eyes, and underneath the murky liquid I swear I saw flames. Not fire, but dancing flames somewhere past this world. I stood, jumped, took off, launched, flew. This liquid, this phoenix blood, this demonic amniotic fluid, erupted around my naked, smoking, flexing form. My muscles twitched, expanding to the breaking point. My skin stretched tight. Every vein bulged, trying to escape the terror that was standing.

I realized my ears were ringing. I clamped my hands over them. _Oh god, sound_. It's never going to stop. As long as I live I'm chained to sound. At least I can close my eyes when I don't want to see, but these ears will always here.

The ringing continued no matter how hard I clamped my hands over my ears.

Later, I would wonder if maybe the ringing had really been the sound of me screaming. I'd never really know, though, because sound was the last straw. Rebirth, that best of torturers, had finally broken me. My mind was gone. I leapt forth into the cold dark before me and began lashing out at anything and everything. Metal. Machine. Stone. Flesh.

And in that violence, in that mania I was able to lose myself again. I blacked out while my body rampaged with adrenaline strength, and for a quick instant it was almost like being dead again.

When I woke up in bed an hour later, I was pathetically sane. My mind was reeling, but my personality had been somehow pieced back together. Still, the memories of that moment, the knowledge that I'd come back, haunted me. It crawled over and under my skin like carrion from impossible space.

I was in a clean set of pajamas, and the white sheets smelled like Alfred's favorite fabric softener. The room was dark enough that I couldn't see the handsome, Victorian design that I knew by heart. The calm pitter-patter of rain off the high, Gothic windows tormented my ears like a thousand cats screwing at once. I could feel the presence of people just outside the doorway. I rolled over to ignore them, and silently cried myself back into sleep, where even the sweetest of dreams would give me no peace from being.


End file.
